SHERLOCK HOLMES
has seen a lot of unusual things.
Every day he opens a fridge filled with decaying organs and jars of week-old blood, he has to listen to Mrs.Hudson's absurd and hard to believe stories when she was ' back in the day' and he has to tag along Scotland Yard throughout their most gruesome and unimaginable cases.
He'd practically seen it all ( even Mycroft's backside when they were in their teens, unfortunately.)
He'd seen everything, except a dead woman, walking.
Standing before him, was Annabelle Lee. She was dressed from head to toe in pale salmon, the same color of her lips under the light of the hallway. Outside, the rain drowned itself out of his ear, the silence canceling the pelting of raindrops against his windows.
She looked so small under the doorframe, her nails were clean and trimmed neatly, with no sign of bodily decay. The small earring in her ear glinted mischievously, peeking through the strands of her hair. They shined just as brightly as her eyes, and they looked nothing like the ones he had seen under the harsh lights of the morgue.
He glanced at the modest curve of her dress, the milky skin was unscathed, with no scars, no blood, and no bullet. It was pristine clean, and he wanted more than nothing but to trace his fingers over where a nasty wound should be.
She remained silent, watching him study her, her head tilted slightly to the side.
" I'm sorry but have we met ?" She finally asked, smiling sheepishly under his sharp gaze.
" We have," He spoke, and his throat felt dry.
She scrunched her brows in confusion, trying to recall his face from her past life. Yet he knew the answer even before she said it, his eyes wandering, questioning, on why is she here?
He wrecked his brain for answers. She could be a double, a rogue twin perhaps? Maybe a hallucination, a figment of his imagination, perhaps an after effect of the drug he had used a month ago.
Maybe she was his regret, a personification of guilt coming back to haunt him because she died so he wouldn't. He would accept that explanation better than the idea of her coming back from the dead, yet as he grazed the warm skin of her fingers, he could almost feel the pulse underneath.
He could feel how she was very much, alive.
He held onto the basket of goods, staring at her innocent smile.
The last time he checked, dead things don't come back to life.
They don't reintroduce themselves to the man they took a bullet for, they don't offer them a basket of sweets as a welcoming gift and they don't live next door to the man who stared at their lifeless bodies.
No, dead women don't walk.
Yet ANNABELLE LEE did, and he didn't know how to tell her that she was a DEAD WOMAN WALKING.
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So I'm updating this fic after forever,and initially I wanted to discontinue it,but I've read some of your comments and it kept me going ! So enjoy this new chapter, feedback and comments are appreciated as always.
-Alylah xx